Rhetoric and the reality of peace

Last updated at 12:38 23 December 2004

Bleak midwinter in London, with cold weather and an even chillier political atmosphere in the wake of the Blunkett affair.

Neither present a problem for Mr Blair, who has spent the past few days travelling round the warm Middle East. How convenient that our Prime Minister wasn't here for the Budd report, how useful that he can focus on saving the world, rising above any grubby goings-on back home.

On Tuesday, Mr Blair visited British troops in Iraq and met the interim Iraqi leader. "You can sense the danger", he said, from behind fortress security in Baghdad's Green Zone, while promising that Britain "was not a nation of quitters".

On what was a flying visit he manages to squeeze in a photo shoot posing tieless with our brave boys atop a tank. The Iraqi elections, he said, would be a triumph for democracy.

Meanwhile, the risks of serving in that strife-torn nation in the run-up to next month's elections were only too obvious this week, when 18 Americans and four Iraqis died in an attack on a US base in Mosul. The day before, 67 Iraqis had been killed.

Again, the gap between Mr Blair's rhetoric and ugly reality were all too apparent.

Yesterday the Prime Minister was off to see Israeli and Palestinian leaders, to announce a London peace conference next March, presided over by him and Jack Straw.

It is a laudatory cause. No one can doubt the need for peace, nor the sense in focusing on Palestine as the root cause of the region's problems, nor the opportunity provided by Yasser Arafat's death.

Again, sadly, the rhetoric surrounding this summit is far removed from reality.

Contrary to Mr Blair's plans when he raised the idea with George Bush last month, the Israelis won't be bothering to come.

And the reason that Ariel Sharon isn't coming is that President Bush has refused to put pressure on the Israeli leader to attend. Instead, Mr Bush will be sending Condoleezza Rice, his choice as the new Secretary of State, as a consolation prize.

Nor has the President taken Mr Blair's advice to appoint a special envoy to the region. So much for the influence that our costly involvement in Iraq was supposed to have given us over American policy in the region.

Terror war chest

A bank in Northern Ireland has been robbed of £22million. Thankfully, no one was killed, but relatives of two bank employees were kidnapped and went through an agonising ordeal.

This was a spectacular criminal coup, but because it took place on the other side of the Irish Sea, there are far more sinister implications.

It appears likely that the robbers were a paramilitary gang, probably from the Republican side of the sectarian divide. This won't have come as a surprise to the experts; one recent report estimated that there are an astonishing 230 organised criminal gangs in Northern Ireland, of which 140 have paramilitary links.

This network of terrorist criminals illustrates the dark side of the peace process, which recently faltered over the Rev Ian Paisley's insistence that there should be photographic evidence of IRA decommissioning.

Even if photographs of the men of violence destroying a few old handguns should eventually be produced, we ought to remember that many of the terrorists have no intention of giving up the so-called armed struggle, as it justifies their criminal pursuit of cash.

Now, in all likelihood, one such group has a war chest of £22million, more than enough for a new wave of violence and death.